horseback and brought
him up to where the grave was made. We then stripped him, and layin' him
across a ditch, we got the implements, of the feadhers as we call them,
to tickle him. Well, now, could you guess, boys, what these feadhers
was? I'll go bail you couldn't, so I may as well tell you at wanst;
divil resave the thing else, but half-a-dozen of the biggest tom-cats we
could get, and this is the way we used them. Two or three of us pitched
our hands well and the tails of the cats into the bargain, we then, as
I said, laid the naked procthor across a ditch, and began to draw the
tom-cats down the flesh of his back. God! how the unfortunate divil
quivered and writhed and turned--until the poor wake crature, that
at first had hardly the strength of a child, got, by the torture he
suffered, the strength of three men; for indeed, afther he broke the
cords that tied him, three, nor three more the back o' that, wasn't
sufficient to hould him. He got the gag out of his mouth, too, and then,
I declare to my Saviour his scrames was so awful that we got frightened,
for we couldn't but think that the voice was unnatural, an sich as no
man ever heard. We set to, however, and gagged and tied him agin, and
then we carded him--first down, then up, then across by one side, and
after that across by the other. * Well, when this was done, we tuk him
as aisily an' as purtily as we could.

"D--n your soul, you ould ras--rascal," said the person they called Ned,
"you wor--wor 'all a parcel o' bloody, d--n, hell--fi--fire cowardly
villains, to--to--thrat--ate any fellow crature--crature in sich a way.
Why didn't you shoo--shoo--oot him at wanst, an' not put--ut him through
hell's tor--tortures like that, you bloody-minded ould dog!"

To tell the truth, many of them were shocked at the old carder's
narrative, but he only, grinned at them, and replied--

"Ay, shoot--you may talk about shootin,' Ned, avick, but for all that
life's sweet."

"Get on--out, you ould sinner o' perdition--to blazes wid you; life's
sweet you ould 'shandina--what a purty--urty way you tuk of sweetenin'
it for him. I tell--ell you, Bil--lilly Bradly, that you'll never die on
your bed for that night's wo--ork."

"And even if I don't, Ned, you won't have my account to answer for."

"An' mighty glad I am of it: my own--own's bad enough, God knows, an'
for the mat--matther o' that--here's God pardon us all, barrin' that
ould cardin' sinner--amin, acheerna villish,